Survey No. 6: Street Games

"Home free all!", or a reasonably garbled variation of that phrase, was a frequent cry heard from the streets of the Bronx (which my Mom still calls "the guttah" to this day). Of course, children will play, regardless of the venue. The Bronx culture imposed certain characteristics on our games, making some of them unique representations of the inner-city world we inhabited. Three-sewer stickball was not typically played in the suburbs for obvious reasons, and neither was Off-the-Stoop.

This was the first time we included gender as a factor in the responses, and although interesting, it didn't produce any earth-shattering statistics. The survey topic apparently elicited some warm and detailed memories, since so many responses provided heartfelt prose on various Bronx street pasttimes. I'd like to share one of these here with you, for I believe it touches on an aspect of our Bronx heritage that persists in our present-day lives. Since the survey responses are anonymous, I'm unable to give credit to its author, but thanks for this bit of insight, whoever you are!

It wasn't so much that the games "could only be properly played on the streets of the Bronx", but the fact that we had the "street-wise" attitudes as children, and quite frankly, the intelligence, to devise the rules of the games to fit the street scene or area that we were playing in. This "street-wiseness" has made us ex-Bronxites a head above those we have met in our adult lives. How many times have we taken jobs in faraway places and, to ourselves, said, "How do these people exist - can't they make a decision?" Or how many times have "WE" saved the day when these "foreigners" couldn't adapt to an immediate situation?

An interesting, provocative notion, no? As usual, I leave it to you to render your own analyses based on the returns. Thanks to everyone who participated.

The total number of unique, usable responses was 97. Of these, 51 were from males, and 46 females.

Which of the following games do you remember playing on the streets?
(multiple responses were allowed, so the total percentages will exceed 100)

Male

Female

Combined

Basketball

12

24%

6

13%

18

19%

Boxball/box Baseball

44

86%

15

33%

59

61%

Hide-and-seek

37

73%

43

93%

80

82%

Hopscotch (Potsy)

21

41%

39

85%

60

62%

Johnny-on-a-pony

34

67%

13

28%

47

48%

Jump rope

18

35%

40

87%

58

60%

(Mother) May I (Giant Steps)

23

45%

33

72%

56

58%

Off-the-stoop (curb)

45

88%

33

72%

56

58%

Punchball

44

86%

33

72%

78

80%

Red Light, Green Light

35

69%

41

89%

76

78%

Red Rover

21

41%

20

43%

41

42%

Ring-o-levio

31

61%

29

63%

60

62%

Skully

29

57%

29

63%

58

60%

Slug (King-Queen)

30

59%

12

26%

42

43%

Stickball

45

88%

16

39%

61

63%

Among the "Other" games listed were:

Double-dutch (with rope or rubber bands)

Paddleball

Touch Football

Marbles

Pitching pennies or tokens

Spin the Bottle

Flipping Cards

Hit the Penny

"A My Name Is..." and other ball-bouncing, leg-turning games

Knucks

Simon Says

Monkey in the Middle

Running Bases

Errors

Briefly describe some aspect of one of the games you played that you feel made it unique to the Bronx.

Several responses mentioned the local architecture (stoops, curbs, walls, sidewalk cracks, etc.) as having the most influence in making Bronx street games so unique. Here is a sampling of some of the responses:

"Using the lower rung of a fire escape as a basketball hoop"

"Games like May I or Red Light, Green Light were perfectly suited to the courtyards that were in the middle of many Bronx apartment buildings. Basically, you used the whole courtyard as a giant game board."

"Like life in the city, our games were rough. We spent a lot of time devising games, or variations of games, that revolved around inflicting pain on each other."

"When we played Ring-o-levio, we used the whole neighborhood as a playing field. Stairways, alleys, hallways, between parked cars, rooftops - they were all part of the game."

"Every sidewalk in the Bronx seemed to have the same sized boxes. They were perfect for boxball."

"The Bronx had wide sidewalks, and the apartment building walls were perfect for slug."

"People in California have no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about Off-the-Stoop. They have no idea what a 'stoop' is."

"I'm not sure it was unique to the Bronx, but we used to draw 'lanes' in the street with chalk, and then roller skate on them. We'd draw all sorts of attachments, like a police station, a garage, and even traffic signs. The Bronx blacktop was perfect for it."

"The Bronx had the best collection of narrow courtyards, five or six stories tall. We'd play a game called Errors, where one guy would throw the ball as high as he could against the courtyard wall, and the other guy had to catch it. If he missed, it was an 'error'."

Please share one or two game-related phrases you used when playing on the streets (like "Chips on the Ball")

Well, just about every guy responding to this question reiterated the "Chips" example in one fashion or another. However, one fellow observed that "chips" were never really collected, at least not in cash. Another frequently mentioned phrase was "hindu", which was used to call a "do-over" because of an unintentional, weird hop of a ball, usually off a crack in the sidewalk. No one mentioned that this phrase was derived from the word "hinder". Here are some others that were offered:

"Cans Up" (or "asses up"), which indicated that the losers would be punished by having to bend over so that the winners could throw a "spaldeen" at their butts.

"He's IT!"

A "cheapie" was when the ball wasn't hit far enough in Stickball.

A "noogie" was the torturous drilling of a bent, pointed middle finger knuckle into the skull of some jerky kid who was held in a headlock. "Tough noogies" was the expression that made the same point, verbally.

"Got nexties."

"Touch black, no backs!"

"Johnny pump"

"Chinky choze always shows" meant that if you had been cheating, you'd mess up on a do-over.

"Ee-awk-ee!"

When we played Potsy, every number always had "-zies" added to the end, like "onezies", "twozies", and "threezies".

A "roofer" was a ball hit onto the roof, and a "chopper" was a ball not hit directly off the curb.

"Ring-o-levio" was itself a Bronx expression. Who the heck knew what it meant, anyway?

How do you feel about the following statement:

The games we played in the Bronx were almost exclusively gender-specific.
Boys played their games (Johnny-on-a-pony, stickball) while the girls played theirs (hopscotch, jump rope).

Male

Female

Combined

Totally Agree

16

31%

3

7%

19

20%

Agree

26

51%

19

41%

45

46%

Not Sure

2

4%

3

7%

5

5%

Disagree

7

14%

17

37%

24

25%

Totally Disagree

0

0%

4

9%

4

4%

What game do you feel could only be properly played on the streets of the Bronx? Why?

"To this day, I think Skully was truly a native Bronx game. The smooth, black tar streets were perfect for us to draw skully boards on. Some streets even had boards permanently painted on them. Everyone collected bottle caps and melted crayon wax into them for skully pieces. I never knew that game to be played anywhere else."

"My block had three sewers that were perfect for stickball. My older brother told me that they were put there specifically for us to play on, and I believed him for years."

"We had a long, smooth wall on my building that was the slug court for many generations. The lines in the sidewalk marked off the Ace-King-Queen positions."

"We always used the stoop in front of my building for stoop-ball, and the curb for Off-the-Curb. Who needed a playground?"

"Manholes delineated various aspects of stickball. They were sometimes bases, sometimes single-double-triple markers."

"Manhole covers had little holes in them that were great for playing Sink-the-marbles."

"No other place but in the Bronx would people permit their children to run in the street, hitting balls with broom handles over sewers and passing cars."

"Because we lived in crowded apartment buildings, the sheer number of kids available always made it easy to round up enough players for any game. No car pools were necessary!"

Since leaving the Bronx, have you ever played Bronx street games with (or taught them to) anyone?

Male

Female

Combined

Yes

24

47%

32

70%

56

58%

No

27

53%

14

30%

41

42%

Do you think today's kids are suffering from a loss of imaginative, physical or social games because of the popularity of video and computer games?

Male

Female

Combined

Yes

43

84%

40

87%

83

86%

No

7

14%

5

11%

12

12%

Not Sure

1

2%

1

2%

2

2%

Amen to that last issue. I truly believe that for all their sophistication and technophilia, kids today have too much of a need to be externally entertained, rather than creating their own forms of amusement. Although I don't frequently get the opportunity to observe inner-city children at play, I believe that this problem is not confined to spoiled suburbs-kids. An ironic fact is that when I taught my daughters to play hit-the-penny, they absolutely loved it. (Certainly cheaper than another Nintendo cartridge!)

One game that no one mentioned which I remember playing quite frequently was Saluggi, wherein one of us would grab something from someone else (a hat, a glove, or anything which that person didn't want to relinquish), shout "Saluggi!", and throw it around to each other, keeping it from the owner. If anyone out there knows the origin of that word, I'd love to hear from you!

November, 2003 - Rip Green from Boca Raton writes: I believe it is a contraction and corruption of two Italian words, or their Sicilian variants: the verb saltare (to jump), and the noun oggetto (object). The plural would be "Sal' oggetti!" (a shortening of "salti gli oggetti"). As anyone who has played this game of torment knows, the poor guy trying to retrieve his possession is forced to continuously jump up in the air to catch it.